Saturday, October 26, 2019

Publication news: In Parentheses - “Fighters”



Hallo all

A publication to announce.
Recently a US lit & art magazine called In Parentheses has published a short politico-travel piece of mine titled “Fighters.” Fragments again here from my corner of Singapore, Melbourne town & the fascinating Pakistani quarter of old Chow Kit in KL that every Malaysian raises eyebrows at upon hearing.
Paper & digital in this case, and costing; the latter $4.20 on their site, here—



After a decent interval I’ll repost the item here.


Cheers & best wishes
P





Zdravo i veselo vi moji orlovi
Americko izdanje opet. Kratak politiko-putnicki komad koji u ovaj slucaj kosta— $US4.20 PDF/$15 papirni.
Fighters—Borci.
Vidite vi koji mozete.
Puno, puno pozdrava svima
Pavle


Wednesday, October 23, 2019

The Artist Philippe Vranjes


Three or four good, accidental meetings with the artist Philippe Vranjes over these number of weeks. Philippe had been recovering from a bad cold and hadn’t been able to make a time in the first little while; after which the man might have intuited the shared preference for the accidental. All smooth and well as usual at the get-togethers. It had been an unusual first meeting with Philippe, or acquaintance in fact, twelve or thirteen years ago. Faisal at the d’Afrique café in Nicholson Street had mentioned the hospitalisation of one of his regulars, the quiet tall White guy with that look about him. The man had no one in the country, Faisal reported; he was unwell; he ought to be visited. It was a kind of appeal, on humanitarian grounds. No meeting of eye, much less words exchanged with Philippe at the time. French-Algerian, Faisal informed. At Western General he could not be found; he had been discharged it seemed. Understandably, Philippe was rather startled at the matter when he was informed some weeks later, but didn’t say too much; not even really offering thanks for the solicitude. Fruit had been bought for the invalid. Philippe talked art in a way that was convincing and compelling. He seemed older than his fifty years (at the first meeting he had been short of forty). Philippe would be turning fifty in a few weeks in the middle of a lagoon in the SW wilderness of Tasmania. For the past couple of years he had been exploring the Grampians and from there went down into the bottom of the continent, where the roar of the Southern Ocean crashed onto the beaches along the coast. A fortnight’s trek would begin in early November. The lagoon was two days out of a place called Cockle Creek, a strange settlement populated with a few hundred people whose descendants went back to the whalers settled there a hundred and fifty plus years ago. A protected heritage area, largely unexplored, where these descendants were allowed to remain in their great tents and various shelters. Building was prohibited in the area. Gathering firewood was permitted this folk, fishing rights and hunting too it may have been. Southern Cross flags were flown at the township, the local men sporting big bushy beards. Many of the landmarks through the area carried French names from early explorers. Philippe had ventured there three or four times, read numerous trekking and walking accounts. Philippe was meticulous in his preparations—precisely 20kg pack, food for two weeks with appropriate nutritional requirements, emergency satellite tracking. A Ranger inspected visitors and checked their packs. In the event of any kind of mishap a helicopter would be needed for rescue. The first part of the lagoon Philippe had investigated some months previously and the dense forest on the Eastern side was entered a few dozen metres. Within that dark thicket only smallest shreds of sky had been visible. There was a great deal of rain in the area; drenchings were common and sun for drying apparel rare. The Why? was impossible to answer for Philippe, understandably. A strong compulsion drove the man and the talk beforehand was a little beside the point. There might possibly be some indefinable artistic outcome from the upcoming venture. Earlier trekking posts on Philippe’s Instagram had won a few hundred followers. As with some other encounters with personally important artists and writers, the talk with Philippe had preceded exposure to the work—work that had subsequently been found strong. It was another rather unusual, happy accident of the same kind as with other artists. Looking at Philippe’s Instagram portfolio with him over lunch at our African cafe, the strength of the images was no surprise. Striking, intriguing pictures these that raised questions and challenges. In the remote locales of forests and creeks Philippe sometimes donned colourful clothing of his own manufacture; striking and elaborate cross-dressing kind of apparel. Like traditional people the world over in such territories responding to their habitat, Philippe agreed. The body of preliminary work sighted on Instagram strongly persuades belatedly signing up to that platform. Philippe was estranged from his Bosnian father, whose family name referenced a large Southern Serbian town. It was another point of contact with Philippe.

A small sample of the photos provided by Philippe:

https://www.instagram.com/philippevranjes/?hl=en






Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Captain


Fifty, sixty or seventy cars streaming below while the old footbridge was crossed. Four lanes in either direction, 80kms per hour at perhaps 25 metres in length. The foundations for the new footbridge had been prepared on one side, which would no doubt be a snazzier structure than the old that linked with the Federation Trail stretching all the way to Werribee, 25kms out. Various memories of the old bridge during schooldays. Poor young George Golic, a couple of years below in the junior forms, had been rescued once on the school side when he was set upon by a bigger boy. In fact it may have been all playfulness there at the entryway, but nevertheless whimpy little George was spared  anything further that day and the perpetrator made to blanch. You didn’t mess with compatriots when the school football captain was passing, Fella! A spiky-haired Pole or Ukrainian, getting too big for his boots. George’s father was a Serb, an older man who had married a young German woman once the labour camps had been liberated. For the German women after the war there had been a shortage of men. In Australia after that wave of post-war immigration the reverse was found, which resulted in chaps thereabout circling blonde Mrs Golic, mismatched as she was. In that same year near where George had been rescued the football captain had once been ambushed by a group of lads from an opposing team, an inferior outfit which had been well beaten some weeks previously. At the head of this party lying in wait was the tough nut Joe Sacco, who had already left school and had a job at one of the meatworks, where boning knives and the like were employed. There were three or four of these Seddon lads, with Joe at their head, awaiting their chance. Returning from lunch at home and coming upon the party, wisest course was to get your ass well outta there pronto—speedily down along Fogarty Avenue all the way to the creek and around back home on Melbourne Road the long way. A stumpy Maltese with short little legs stood little chance racing a thoroughbred; fisticuffs might have been another matter. With the cars hurtling beneath there was often a jet risen in the big Northern sky, winging up from the airport. After the best part of a decade sequestered in the concrete canyons of Singapore, the wide stretches above unfurled like a colourful tapestry that pulled on your eyeballs. Following the low winter skies further expanse was offered in the early autumn, an encouraging, calming field of limitless scope. Up on the sides of the village shepherding, up at the higher summer pastures, all the ancestors across the generations had often entered the great skies above and travelled between the clouds with their herds. One old prorok, prophet from Village Uble was famously said to have anticipated the advent of the aeroplane, claiming at some point early in the previous century that a day would arrive when donkeys, if not pigs, would fly. Back at the house two possums had been caught in the hire cage and taken down to the gum-lined rail-line at the bottom of the street. Despite this, the quiet mocking screech behind the plaster at the foot of the stairs continued mornings going down for breakfast. What kind of animal was that? How did it get in and out of the roof? The thinking now was that perhaps a shrill may have been involved, and not an old poss. A couple of evenings ago checking the seal on a presumed access point up on the ridge of the roof, a dark shadow had suddenly flitted below from the direction of the neighbour behind. Wha! Whoooo!… All uncanny quick-time. Wings had beat under the alcove of the house, glossy and darkly black. At that speed the sudden uplift that would have been needed in order to avoid crashing into the closed gate around the corner of the Studio would have been quite something to behold. Hard down on the joystick and eyes shut tight, Birdie! What was most striking was that the bird had passed hard-by the lounge-room windows in front, between them and the thick posts holding up the room above. At least it had passed like that by the near post, hard left at the corner in order to avoid the entry porch. An eye of an needle threaded and around the corner the up-surge at such speed defied imagining.


Sunday, October 13, 2019

Alexievich Vol. 5


Reading Alexievich again, the fifth volume now of hers, the most recently translated Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories—which actually dates from the mid-80s, when the Russian original chronicling childhood memories of WWII was published. Astonishing material again, the same as all her previous work; one page after another in the first third that has been read thus far.
         Two particular thoughts occur at this point. One is the remarkable testimony her work provides from so-called common humanity. Again her witnesses are often workers, cooks, cashiers, locksmiths and printers; the professional classes are largely in the minority. And yet what articulations are offered by these unlikely commentators. With what force and penetration do their voices ring out.
         The record presented is quite literally stunning; a reader needs to pause regularly every little while to absorb the matter. This great tide of human experience held within short fragments carries a weight of feeling and insight that overloads the mind one episode after another. The genesis from such sources is remarkable and conclusive; it is unlike any other example one can bring to mind from the cannon, or from anywhere else in cultural record.
         A couple of years ago a friend here in Melbourne had been read some passages from the post-war Soviet period book (Secondhand Time); after two or three paragraphs his suspicions were quickly raised. Such words as these could not have emerged from some anonymous nobody, a postal worker or radio technician, the listener suggested. Authorial manufacture was the understandable thought.
         The second point that occurred was what did literature such as this suggest for all the writing schools everywhere in our Western form, the most notable included among the rest. Enough has been seen now of the famed Iowa classes to suggest something may be amiss, or at least highly questionable, in that much celebrated workshop model. The remove from the communal, shared experience is the most pertinent matter.
One carried Alexievich around like a prayer book. Like a rock someone had given you that must be transported to a summit or some promontory, it was spontaneously expressed some days ago to the doubting Thomas cited above.
The Buchenwald segment just now (p. 132-36) presenting the darkness from the smoke of the chimney and the captivation of a yellow flower in the field where the transported labourers worked was overwhelming.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Publication news: Murder at the Haig - OJAL


Howdy all

A recent publication to announce over in Boston, in the US of A.
The outfit is called Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (OJAL); the piece “Murder at the Haig,” a short flash again from my corner of SG.
Free access here—



Best of the best to all
Pavle

Saturday, October 5, 2019

Impressive Couple


Brother and sister briskly crossing Barkly Street, fine, handsome pair. Neatly dressed in fashionable black—office skirt and blouse and double-breasted woollen jacket, both hands pocketed the young man. How they have bloomed, a fetching couple; well-matched husband and wife an observer might have thought. In some corners of the globe men and women still married within their ethnic group and culture. Look on after them! Stand and stare as they proceed up Albert Street on a march; they were unaware of the observation. Stand and stare, watching until they have stepped up onto the footpath and passed into the shadow beneath the bridge. How far they had come. How very far! How far gone their poor, pitiful mother had been to leave two young children behind like that; to give them no consideration. The signals and the alarm at the freight crossing at the bottom of their street, immediately adjacent our own, had been introduced after Neda, one of the two schizophrenics in Bab’s circle. (The other, Desa the Serb, had bloodied our fine chesterfield one day after forgetting her tampon.) Neda the full-form embodiment of Ana Karenina by the rails, watching the wheels of the wagons and timing her leap under. Her house was one off the Avenue corner, 90-100 metres from the line. Two minute steady walk. Twenty years before Bab had had that same train in mind after rash words from husband Lazar. You not find it (the document in her safe-keeping that was required), nemoj me cekat kuci! don’t await my return!... Would the thought of her two small children orphaned have given Bab pause? Had the document not finally turned up would she have wildly dashed away? We were two off Montgomery Corner; half a minute from the line. (Waiting out a train was the other factor; the haulage was infrequent there.) Our post-war community was over-represented in the psych ward at the local hospital. We were wild, fierce, reckless, often in the news. Violent explosions had made us notable; our volatile politics unsettling the old Australians. (Disintegration of the country was still decades off.) Neda and her husband Ivo were either Croats proper, or Dalmatian. Ivo was older, turned lumpy in early middle-age; unhappy marriage. Denied their mother’s love this impressive young pair of survivors. Bab had begun minding them a few years before the tragedy and continued later when the widower remained. Bab’s kindness and loving would have helped; at the time somehow it had all failed to sufficiently register. Catastrophe was impossible to accept in youthful years, needed to be warded off. Josko was short for Josip perhaps (Tito’s given name); sister Marianna. Not easily dislodged from the deep, securely buried memory of forty-five years past.